Cooler Nights

When I first typed that, I actually had “Cooker Nights,” which made no sense at all.

In sort of that same vein, last night I was texting a friend and typed “brick and mortar,” but the auto-correct changed it to, I swear, “brick and Mitterand.”

You know, François Mitterrand the, 21st President of the French Republic.

And no, I did not already know that 23rd thing, I had to look up how to spell his first name and thought I’d through in the rest of the sentence.

Because, see, while I don’t KNOW for sure that I have ever texted the word “mortar” before, at least on this phone, I can absolutely assure you I have never in my entire life texted the name Mitterand.

Why on earth would iPhone pick THAT name out of the blue to add to that sentence. “Brick and Mitterand.” Sounds like a law firm.

We watched a little of an old Parks and Recreation last night, and I laughed until I cried over one of the vignettes there. The guy is calling his ex-girlfriend and says, “April, this is Andy…Dwyer. This is like the 200th time I’ve called and you never call back, so I just wanted to say if you’re trying to tell me something, I don’t know what it is, because you won’t call me back.”

That struck me as amusing in the extreme.

It’s turned cooler in the last day or two here. Not cold, not by anyone’s assessment, but cooler. It’s in the low 60’s or the high 50’s out there now, and I’m going to have to do the early fall things soon – cut the basil down for what is probably the last time and make another vat of pesto, bring in the tenderest of the plants that get to summer outside, make room for them

I have to check the heater in the fish tanks and make sure it’s still working, so the aquariums stay warm over winter.

We need to get the air conditioner out of the den window and move the emptry outdoor pots and planters – the nice ones, the ceramics and terra cottas – into the shed, and bring all the garden tools into the garage.

We need to get a piece of the kind of netting of which the pool cover is made, to repair a worn corner and a small hole caused by a branch that fell on the pool this year.

drew wants to clean out the chimney again and he’ll clean the gutters two or three more times before the end of the year. He’s a teensy bit obsessive about gutters.

And we won’t get all of it done, but we’ll get most of it, and winter will come whether we do or don’t.

I don’t like cold at all – I will likely complain about it piteously over the winter – but I do like fall, that first cooling off. It’s nice when it’s cool enough that I sleep under covers, cool enough that the warmth of another body is pleasant.

slave drew is an absolute blast furnace of body heat, which is lovely in the cooler temps, but mostly sweaty and sticky in the warmer ones.

I stayed up later than I should have last night, and slept more poorly than I’d have liked last night, so I’m off for an early(er) night tonight.

I’m kinda glad I have a “stupid” phone. Then again, I can’t blame it for putting some truly funny typos then, can I?

I LOVE Autumn. My absolute FAVORITE time of year. The crisp air, the “nesting”…we’ve switched some closets, and I’ve put the hose away. I need to attack the garden, really strongly, and get some mum’s in there. Time for pumpkins, and haybales, and harvest my corn since I’m too cheap to buy them! (really? $25 for a bunch of stalks that would otherwise be composted? I love supporting my local farms but not quite that much. I just grow them as a windbreak, and hack ’em down in fall.)

One of my maples is turning color…brilliantly red, with a smattering of orange. Seems a bit early for that, but then again, we’ve had a drought this year here.

I like autumn myself. It’s a sort of gentle entry into winter, which I appreciate. A break from the heat of summer.

This is the time of the year, too, when I notice the plants, my riotous profusion of blooms, are looking tired. They have bloomed and bloomed and bloomed, created flowers and seeds, and now the cycle is over and they’re ready for rest, for the end of this cycle, knowing the seeds will sprout next year and that they WILL go on.

Or maybe I ascribe more cognizance to flowers than I should, but you know what I mean. The petunias are a little leggy from a few missed waterings, the daisies are still blooming but not so profusely. The cockscomb is still blooming and the bees are still drunkenly buzzing around, but it’s only the top of the plants that are that deep magenta now.

My birthday is in the fall, school starts in the fall, in some ways, it seems like the “real” new year, the beginning of another cycle.

my garden suffered badly this summer…it was way hotter than normal in the northeast, and my part of the world was also affected by the drought; our city was on a water ban and watering “flowers” was frowned upon. *sigh*